stretch

I could touch my toes…
I can no longer blame it on long legs. Crap

Must do something about this..

While Mr. Yes finished remodeling his downstairs bathroom this morning, I laid on my back with my feet on the stairs and two granite pool balls on either side of my spine. I stretched and let the weight of my body press them into my tense muscles. I’d hit a hot spot and yelp and then it would slowly release. It was awesome. I stretched out my hips for a long time, too. We went to the beach on Saturday and something about walking in soft sand had my right hip aching.

I just booked tickets for Mr. Yes and I to go back to NC in October so I can be my friend’s maid of honor. It was a stretch because my fear of somehow doing something wrong and him being mad at me has made me procrastinate for weeks. With fares going up, I forced myself to do it and sent him the details. Why is this so scary for me? Why, when I used to make complicated travel arrangments for a demanding boss, did booking two tickets throw me for a loop? I don’t know (ok, I don’t want to look at it right now), but it’s done!

my left hip. I do tree pose while lying on my back and my body guards and tightens when I try to relax the hip extensors on that side. Several days of work on it and it’s finally loosening up. I don’t recall injuring it, ever, but the guarding response is as if my body is protecting an injured area. There’s a fear reaction to letting my thigh muscles relax, too. Interesting stuff. I’ll keep at it.

A woman in my mentorship sort of cut me off at the knees when I was talking about how it unsettles me to contemplate staying here in CA for a long time. Instead of smoothing over the uncomfortable silence that descended on the group after she semi-snapped at me, I sat in it and asked myself if what she said hurt. I was mostly surprised that she thought I was saying there was something wrong with staying in place, which wasn’t my point at all. We all sat there for a minute or so and then drifted apart. It was a stretch not to make it more comfortable for everyone.

I did 16 minutes of contour drawing yesterday. It’s a stretch for me to focus on one thing and draw that slowly. I’m hoping to go for 30 minutes today.

I’d like a few 1-to-1 lessons to make sure I’m getting the most out of my daily and weekly practice. There’s a studio in town I could try – but I’ll wait until the baby is sleeping a little better and things are getting back to normal…

I did Byron Katie’s The Work on my feelings about how some people I love handle money and responsibility. For four pages and over an hour, I questioned my thoughts about what they should do. I love this work, but it is WORK. It takes time, honesty, some simple sitting while things sink in and questioning the larger assumptions underlying specific judgments. Then, of course, after all that, there’s turning the judgments around. I see now that what’s been driving me crazy is that I feel guilty about living at my godmother’s rent free and ashamed that I’m not independent and don’t have a car and savings and a plan for the future. So instead of looking at all that inside me, I looked around until I saw elements of it in someone else’s behavior and attacked them. All of the self-righteousness and none of the blame!

I want to use The Work more often to stretch my mind so that I can give myself and others more space to be who we are, instead of withholding affection and love until we act like we “should.” Here’s one of the things that I wrote:

“Maybe I could just smile. I don’t see it. I would let him have his say. I can’t imagine not being pissed off. It’s like I’d have to stop being myself. Is that such a bad thing? Do I have to be “myself” or can I just be Self, present and watching? Try it. Try watching myself react.”

As soon as I wrote it, I stopped. Why am I so protective of what I think makes me “myself”? Isn’t “myself” whatever I happen to be at any moment? Can I trust that whatever shows up is myself and not try to control it and manage others’ perceptions of it? That’s a big stretch. I’m going to do it. Of course, I may do it for 2 seconds and fall back into the habit of reacting in a way that I think reflects “myself” best, but I’ll keep doing it for as long as I can. What have I got to lose except my identity, which can only be lost if it isn’t real?

[that all sounds a bit abstract, but I wanted to note this for future]

EDIT: Oh, and while I’m noting this down for future, how about the surprising thought you had that “people don’t have a right to be unhappy unless they’re trying to make their lives better.” Yikes, right?! We have to earn our unhappiness? It’s amazing the things you find in your head.

But I bought an awesome stretching book called “Stretching”, by Bob Anderson. Some great variations in there, enough to keep my thinking and mixing things up for a while. I’ve realised I’ve been stretching too hard – if I go gentler on myself it hurts less, I get faster results, and I don’t get sore.

I am horribly homicidally cranky today. I’ve stretched this into a series of opportunities to stretch my empathy muscle.

I did yoga during lunch, holding most poses for at least 45 seconds. Whew! That left hip is crazy tight.

I accepted the guest slot on a conference call with my mentor and a lot of other artists and entrepreneurs. That’s a big stretch for me! The write up about me was awesome and very flattering. Look at me coming out as an artist, wild woman and Someone Who Has Stuff to Say.

On Tuesday after work :-)

is wondering what it did to deserve all this stretching. It’s a tight little thing! I do tree pose while lying in bed to help release it and am looking at different ways of sitting to keep that hip extensor from contracting.

I did a lavendar wash over the dark blue of the large canvas. I wish I could take a class on paint textures and brush technique. I can’t seem to figure out when to get the canvas wet, use a dry brush, how to evenly thin the paint, etc. I know it’s a matter of working with the materials, so my stretch here is to allow my first and early paintings to be uneven, awkward or clunky and not “save” my ideas for when I can paint better. If the woman with the cloche wants to be memorialized now, she shall be and it’ll be her own fault if she turns out looking a little strange!